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Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

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Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#131

Post by tjl »

Symbiote wrote: post #13
_lbaq wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was in a different world, this is the home computer sphere, its a program.

RISC OS, the OS from the company that later became ARM, used "application" from at least 1987, and by 1991 that had been abbreviated to "Apps" in some of the UI, although I think we still said "application." These were school or home computers. Picture under RISC OS 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_RISC_OS

The term "killer app" goes back a long way (back to the early 80s) and was first used for Visicalc, I think.

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#132

Post by squarefoot »

Joeboy wrote: post #64
Fifer82 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This never occurred to me until you said it. Did that work??

Up to a point. It's an analogue process so each copy degrades the signal. At some point games started having custom file loaders which made them load faster but also served as a kind of copy protection as copies were more likely to fail. Of course it also meant the original was more likely to fail.

The trick was to add a little circuit to the player which would keep the signal as clean as possible while reinforcing it. I did a similar thing many moons ago by putting an old TTL chip into the C64 Datassette then wire its gates as buffers. The input was connected to a point where I identified the played cassette signal was present and the output after some light filtering went to a RCA plug to which I would connect my Aiwa deck in record mode. Any copy made that way would work much better than the originals: no more failed loads after 25 minutes waits and no more azimuth twiddling to find the sweet spot.

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#133

Post by tjl »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #87

I am reminded of the last track on Information Society's[1] 1992 album "Peace and Love, Inc.", which was a recording of a 300 baud modem encoding an ASCII text message[2]. Their debut album, "Information Society"[3], used the somewhat obscure "CD+G" format, which included graphics that could be displayed by compatible players. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Society_(band) [2] http://www.textfiles.com/h…

The box set for David Bowie's Sound + Vision album included a fourth CD that included an extra video track in addition to three regular CD audio tracks.

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#134

Post by takeda »

Govindae wrote: post #119
thanatropism wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but "application" didn't mean "program", it meant "application". Lotus 1-2-3 was an application of PCs, it made PCs useful.

I thought the etymology was from function application. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apply

I doubt it. If anything, they probably just have common origins.

Apply originates from functional languages which did exist at the time, but were not really used outside of research.

Occam's Razor tells me that it most likely came out from "how you use the computer" and then it evolved to refer to the program itself.

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#136

Post by nicky0 »

Someone wrote: post #14
hkmurakami wrote: post #3

Pretty sad they're calling this an "app". If it's dated to 1996, clearly it's a "program"!

"Application" was around way earlier, as shorthand for "application program" (to be distinguished from "utility program", and, possibly, "game") For examples look at the search hits in https://archive.org/stream/1981-03-compute-magazine/Compute_... . I wouldn't call this an application, though. "App" is completely wrong, as it was introduced by Apple for user-facing programs running on a mobile phone (if Android had…

App is short for Application, not Apple.

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#137

Post by Grustaf »

Joeboy wrote: post #46

You see those blocky colours in the youtube video? Those are the Spectrum's "attribute file", a small colour overlay that goes on top of the higher resolution 1-bit monochrome bitmap part of the machine's video ram. Gives you a "hi-res colour computer" while saving a ton of ram, but at the cost of creating horrible artifacts when differently coloured objects get too close together. The same principle is still used in…

Another way to do a similar thing is HAM on Amiga, I only recently got to reading about how it works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hold-And-Modify

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#138

Post by dbattaglia »

pasta wrote: post #8
jxramos wrote: post #2

I remember listening to OK Computer some years ago and I must have been studying or something or other and the track "Fitter Happier" came on. Those familiar know how it goes, the Stephen Hawking voice droning on about all these ideals worth pursuing ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HimvFbossU8 ). I sat back half listening that evening and this funny response came out in my head, where I responded to the monotone na…

As I remember this was done on an Apple computer. In the command line you could do this with they 'say' command. The parameter -v is used for the voice. And I think "Fitter Happier" is 'Fred'. say -v Fred "fitter.happier.more productive" Edit: other sources say it was 'Bruce'. But I don't have an Apple, so I can't check.

Another clever use was "Kathys Song" by Apoptygma Berzerk, which was named for the Mac "Kathy" speech synthesizer voice used to sing the chorus. Great song too.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oBYrZNZSbf4

Re: Radiohead album hides an app that only runs on an '80s computer

#140

Post by usuallymatt »

ilamont wrote: post #68
jxramos wrote: post #2

I remember listening to OK Computer some years ago and I must have been studying or something or other and the track "Fitter Happier" came on. Those familiar know how it goes, the Stephen Hawking voice droning on about all these ideals worth pursuing ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HimvFbossU8 ). I sat back half listening that evening and this funny response came out in my head, where I responded to the monotone na…

Radiohead also released an EP of OK Computer B-sides called "Airbag / How Am I Driving?" It's absolutely brilliant, but relatively unknown. If you haven't heard it seek it out.

Yeah I love that EP. The new version of OK Computer (aka OKNOTOK) features all the tracks from the EP as well as 3 previously unreleased tracks that they've played live.
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